FAST FOOD NEWS: Pei Wei Asian Diner To Offer Sriracha Chicken Next Month, But Not The Sriracha You Love and Burn Your Mouth With

Pei Wei Asian Diner, P.F. Chang’s fast casual sister, will start offering their new Sriracha Chicken on October 8. To promote the spicy chicken dish, Pei Wei has put up a special website detailing how the dish was developed.

Now before you sriracha sauce fans get excited, you should know that the sauce they used isn’t the Rooster Sauce we all know, love, and burn our taste buds with. Instead, Pei Wei’s chefs flew to Thailand, a place filled with sriracha sauces we all don’t know and don’t love, to create their own sriracha sauce.

According to the Pei Wei’s Sriracha Chicken website, the dish will also feature pineapples, tomatoes, and Chinese long beans.

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As a Thai American, American “Sriracha” makes me go “what is this i don’t even” while actual Thai Sriracha is what I know and love. You really should try Thai Sriracha, though it’s not quite as versatile as the preservative-filled hot sauce by Huy Fong Foods, it becomes very obvious that authentic Sriracha fits better with Thai cuisine. The Huy Fongs variety comes off as completely lacking in subtlety while the Thai version is a lot more balanced, mild, and sweet.

That being said, Huy Fong Sriracha goes great on anything that’s not very good to begin with, which isn’t as true of authentic Sriracha. Most of this comes from the fact that it’s relatively spicy, and hot sauces in general go well on most things since they add a lot of saltiness and spice.

I’m pretty sure in Pei Wei’s case, they’re doing the right thing for the kind of food they’re serving. I haven’t ever been to the place, but if it’s supposed to be a level higher in fanciness than greasy Chinese take-out joints, then I’d rather have the complementary subtlety of Thai Sriracha rather than the overwhelming spice of the American variety. Of course, it could also just be a really Americanized Asian food place à la Panda Express; I don’t actually know.

All that being said, I think that the ironic aftermath would be that you’d end up being disappointed that they bastardized Rooster sauce and I’d end up being disappointed that they bastardized Thai Sriracha.

I was going to make a few remarks, but it seems that Ryan has pretty much made all the same points I was going to make. While I do enjoy the Huy Fong sauce, in no way is that delicious mess identifiable as Sriracha.